Head of Talent and People

Who we are:

Sardine is the leading agentic risk platform for fighting financial crime. Our integrated solution unifies data across risk teams to help organizations stop fraud in real time, prevent AI-driven attacks, and automate fraud and AML operations. Sardine’s platform is strengthened by one of the fastest-growing fraud consortiums in the market, spanning more than 6 billion profiled devices, 800 million consumers, and 3 million businesses worldwide. Leading companies including FIS, GoDaddy, Intuit, Edward Jones, ZoomInfo, and Checkout.com rely on Sardine to secure and grow trust in their products.

Our culture:

• We hire talented, self-motivated individuals with extreme ownership and high growth orientation.

• We value performance and not hours worked. We believe you shouldn't have to miss your family dinner, your kid's school play, friends get-together, or doctor's appointments for the sake of adhering to an arbitrary work schedule.

• We're a remote-first team spread across time zones, so no office to report to - work from wherever helps you do your best work. Just a couple of things to keep in mind: pay is based on where you're located, and you'll need to keep a home base in the country you're hired in. So while we love the "coffee shop today, mountains tomorrow" life, this isn't a passport-optional, work-from-anywhere-on-Earth kind of remote - think flexible within your country, not borderless.

Location:

• Berkeley, California

About the role

Sardine is looking for a Head of Talent & People to lead and grow our global team. This is a hands-on, player-coach role - you'll set direction and manage a full team of practitioners, while still staying close enough to the work to source a hard-to-fill candidate yourself, sit in on a tough employee relations conversation, or dig into a comp band directly. You'll own Talent, People Ops, and HR Business Partnering end-to-end, with a mandate to build pragmatic systems that scale with a fast-growing startup.

What you'll be doing

Team Leadership

• Lead and manage a team of Recruiters, People Ops/HR professionals, including any team leads within those functions

• Set goals, priorities, and capacity plans across Recruitment and People Ops/HR

• Coach, develop, and performance-manage team; build a bench of future team leads as the org grows

• Own headcount planning across the organization

• Create the operating rhythm for the team (standups, pipeline reviews, OKRs, hiring sprints) without over-processizing a still-scrappy function

• Model the player-coach standard you expect from the team - jump into the work alongside them

Talent Acquisition (the largest part of the job. This role is Talent-heavy)

• Build and continuously improve our hiring process: interview loops, scorecards, calibration, and candidate experience

• Partner directly with the CEO and Exec team on leadership hires. Own full-cycle recruiting for key leadership roles, including sourcing, screening, and closing candidates yourself

• Build scalable sourcing channels and employer branding so Sardine competes for top talent without over-relying on agencies

• Track and report on hiring metrics (pipeline health, time-to-fill, offer acceptance) and adjust strategy accordingly

People Operations

• Oversee the People Ops Lead and team who own the employee lifecycle (onboarding, offboarding, HRIS administration, benefits administration, and compliance) - ensure the function runs smoothly and scales with rest of the company

• Manage and scale our existing performance review, compensation banding, leveling, and promotion cycle infrastructure - this is already built and robust; your job is to run it well, refine it as we grow, and make sure it stays credible with employees and managers

• Ensure compliance with employment law across jurisdictions where Sardine has employees, in partnership with your People Ops team

• Provide oversight and escalation support on vendor relationships (benefits brokers, payroll providers) that the People Ops Lead manages day to day

HR Business Partnering

• Act as a trusted advisor to managers and the leadership team on org design, team structure, performance management, and employee relations

• Partner with leaders as an internal leadership coach

• Handle employee relations issues with sound judgment, discretion, and fairness

What you'll need

• 12+ years in talent/recruiting and people roles, with real depth in talent

• Experience running people function at fast-paced, high-growth tech startups

• Proven experience managing a strong Talent and People team, ideally spanning both Recruitment and People Ops/HR - you know how to set direction, hold people accountable, and develop managers

• Generalist range: you're equally credible talking about an offer negotiation, a comp band, a difficult employee relations issue, or a performance management

• A player-coach mindset - you want to do the work, not just direct it

• Excellent judgment and discretion; you build trust quickly with founders, execs, and employees at every level

• Strong operating instincts: you build lightweight, scalable systems rather than heavy process

• Based in the Bay Area, with the ability to work from our Berkeley office at least 2 days every week

Benefits we offer:

• Generous compensation in cash and equity

• Early exercise for all options, including pre-vested

• Work from anywhere: Remote-first Culture

• Flexible paid time off and Year-end break

• Health insurance, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents - US and Canada specific

• 4% matching in 401k / RRSP - US and Canada specific

• MacBook Pro delivered to your door

• One-time stipend to set up a home office - desk, chair, screen, etc.

• Monthly meal stipend

• Monthly social meet-up stipend

• Annual health and wellness stipend

• Annual Learning stipend

Join a fast-growing company with world-class professionals from around the world. If you are seeking a meaningful career, you found the right place, and we would love to hear from you.

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